


simple things

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: SASO 2017 [39]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 19:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11721084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: “You knew I was behind you?”“You’re quiet,” Kita concedes, and doesn’t finish the sentence as he turns back to gaze at the river.But it’s me.Kita by the river with the jacket draped over his shoulders.





	simple things

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 5: Clue | [originally posted here](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/24808.html?thread=15514856#cmt15514856)
> 
>  _If you want me look me up_  
>  _I don't exist in usual places_  
>  _Subtle as the wind is grey_  
>  \- Belle and Sebastian, "Simple Things"

The day after they win their third place playoffs in the Interhigh, Osamu tells Atsumu he’ll be home late, and follows Kita out of the gym before Atsumu can pester him for reasons.

 _So,_ he thinks. This is where Kita Shinsuke goes, in moments like this.

“I come in peace,” he calls out, when Kita turns at the sound of his footstep on the grassy riverbank.

“I know,” says Kita. “If you didn’t, I would’ve shaken you off long ago.”

“You knew I was behind you?”

“You’re quiet,” Kita concedes, and doesn’t finish the sentence as he turns back to gaze at the river. _But it’s me._

Osamu hears the rest of it anyway, crystal clear in the silence they share, and finds his place next to Kita. It’s a warm day, summer nearly upon them. He can hear the flies buzzing among the reeds, as loud as his thoughts, Kita’s thoughts, and he holds his words close to his chest for now, lets the pricking sunlight and the reflections in the water do all his talking.

“Coach Oomi asked me today if I would retire,” says Kita.

“Ah.”

Osamu breathes, and waits. The breeze picks up, ruffling lightly at Kita’s hair, at the jacket draped over his shoulders. Kita crosses his arms. He doesn’t sigh, not quite, but there’s a set to his lips that Osamu knows, a stubbornness that’s fighting to find its way through all the cracks in his perfection.

“He said he would trust whatever decision I made.”

“You’re going to college, aren’t you?” Osamu asks.

Kita nods.

“I am,” he says, and his answer is decisive.

Osamu slips his hands into his pockets, scuffs a toe into the ground. The soil by the river is damp and smells of the last days of spring. He watches a dragonfly skim across the surface, leave tiny ripples that fade from sight before he can blink.

Kita’s watching the water too, as he murmurs, a musing under his breath almost to himself, “All rivers flow to the sea.”

“I’m a simple kind of guy, Kita-san—”

Kita scoffs. “You might fool anyone else with that.”

 _But it’s me._ Osamu smiles.

“And I don’t know much about fancy metaphors, but if you already know you’re going to college anyway, does it matter?”

Kita’s still, for a while. The river runs.

“Can I still be your captain?” he asks, at last.

It’s a question tossed out on the wind. It’s not a question to Osamu, in particular, and Osamu knows this, by the timbre of it. He knows there’s a lot Kita keeps to himself, that he has entire tides that pull and push within him, and sometimes, a roiling storm.

Standing here by his side, watching that jacket billow at his back, Osamu cannot imagine another answer, only _yes, yes, always,_ and he tells Kita, in all the ways he knows how.


End file.
